Time is running
out for community and park activists hoping to head off
city plans to build a filtration plant at Mosholu Golf
Course in Van Cortlandt Park as the City Council prepares
to vote on the proposal at the end of June.

Two local councilmembers who serve on committees
central to the process said they're having trouble
convincing their colleagues to vote against the plan.

"I'm not optimistic because the answer I keep
getting is that we're under a Consent Decree," said
Councilwoman June Eisland, chair of the 17-member Land
Use Committee, referring to the court-supervised
agreement the city signed with the federal government, in
which it promised to build a filtration plant for the
Croton water system.

Councilman Adolfo Carrion, the Fordham Democrat who
serves on the five-member Siting Subcommittee of Land
Use, said he's been facing a similar uphill battle.
"I think people feel sympathy with the community's
concerns -- there's even empathy -- but probably because
they are not directly affected by this massive project,
they may be more willing to consider the possibility of
the construction of a filtration plant," Carrion
said.

Both lawmakers said, however, that they are continuing
to lobby their colleagues. Carrion urged residents to
attend the June 22 public hearing at 10:30 a.m. in the
Council Chambers at City Hall.

The subcommittee Carrion sits on is the first stop for
the proposal in the Council, and what happens there will
almost certainly determine its fate in the full Land Use
Committee and then in the full 51-member Council. Gail
Benjamin, director of the Council's Land Use unit said
that there have been "very few instances where the
full committee has done something other than that
recommended by the subcommittee, because the site
committee has done all the fact finding."

Also, Benjamin said, it's "rare that the Council
would do something other than what the [Land Use]
Committee had done."

"It would be very, very strange for 17 members
[on the Committee] to go one way and then have 30-odd
members to completely repudiate it," Benjamin added.

Key to the process is Council Speaker Peter Vallone
who keeps tight control over the legislative body,
rewarding loyal members and punishing those who vote
against him. On this issue though, Vallone is letting
members go their own way, Carrion said, a position that
does not bode well for those who ultimately could need 35
votes to stop the project.

"He has shown sensitivity and concern about the
community's feelings, and the community's perspective,
but he hasn't really given an indication of which way
he's going to go," Carrion said. "What he's
essentially doing is is letting it play out and not
trying to influence the members."

Meanwhile, plant opponents are busy trying to convince
the Council to go their way. Activists with the Northwest
Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition have been meeting
with members of the Council. The Sierra Club, an
environmental group opposed to filtration for the Croton,
has also held meetings with individual lawmakers.
Elizabeth Cooke, executive director of the Parks Council,
a nonprofit advocacy organization circulated a
"Friend of Parks" letter warning park
enthusiasts around the city that the taking of parkland
for an industrial facility is a dangerous precedent. And
Eisland took some of her Land Use Committee colleagues on
a tour of the site.

On the other side of the battle, labor officials,
eyeing the union jobs that construction of the plant will
require, are lobbying for approval of the project

The Council vote will cap a six-month land use review
process that began Dec. 1 when the city Department of
Environmental Protection announced the Mosholu Golf
Course site. All three community boards surrounding the
park unanimously rejected the plan, as did the borough
board, a body made up of the Bronx's City Council
delegation and the chairs of the borough's 12 community
boards. The City Planning Commission, however,
overwhelmingly approved the project by a vote of 10 to
one. If the Council were to reject the plan, Mayor
Giuliani could then veto that action. An override of the
veto would require the votes of two-thirds of the
Council. If the proposal survives the process,
construction is scheduled to begin by September 2001,
unless plant opponents can stop the action in the courts.
Two lawsuits are pending, and others on the grounds of
park alienation (activists believe state law prohibits
the taking of parkland without an act of the legislature)
and environmental justice are being considered.